Final answer:
Culture shock is the anxiety and disorientation individuals feel in unfamiliar cultural environments, related to the fight-or-flight response and recognized by Kalervo Oberg.
Step-by-step explanation:
Culture shock are feelings of anxiety that arise in unfamiliar or difficult communication contexts (environment). Culture shock typically encompasses a range of emotions and reactions people have when they are confronted with cultural practices that are different from their own, usually experienced during international travel or when immersing oneself in a new culture. It's a term attributed to anthropologist Kalervo Oberg, who noted that individuals go through a period of fascination and adjustment before often feeling stress and disorientation due to the differences they face. It relates closely to the fight-or-flight response, a set of responses that can lead to anxious feelings in modern situations where neither fighting nor fleeing is an appropriate reaction.
In psychological terms, this can range from difficulty in understanding new nonverbal cues and etiquette to more extreme forms of anxiety resulting from an inability to assimilate new experiences into existing mental schemas, as described by cognitive developmental theory, such as Piaget's concept of stranger anxiety in children.